by Janet Morris
When they came to get him out of the virtual test bay, a gray-haired female technician whose placket read "Smith, E.E." told him, "The psychocorrection program can give you a number of insights into yourself, Commander South, if you'd care to view the results."
"I don't want my ass corrected, Doctor,*' he said bluntly. "I like me just the way I am." Had they been fiddling with his brain while he'd been in the helmet? When his heart stopped racing, he reminded himself that he would have known if they'd tried. He'd learned that much in Unity space: you kept your mind free, at all costs.
If he wanted to, he could screw up their program royally. Depending on what they thought they'd gotten from him during the session, maybe he should. He said, "Sure, let's go see what kind of snails and puppy dog tails I'm made of."
The woman glanced quizzically at him as she led him into an adjoining control room. Nursery rhymes had been lost to humanity somewhere along the way, then. Too bad. Lots of good images, lots of good advice, lots of good time-stabilizers in nursery rhymes. South had become real dependent on mantras of one kind or another in Unity space, and nursery rhymes were among the most culturally-specific.
The woman showed him his mind, mapped in three dimensions, as a bunch of colored blocks on axes. She rotated the axes for him, so he could see how his responses had clumped. There was a good/bad axis, longitudinally, and there was an alien/doesn't matter axis, longitudinally.
He'd given responses that clumped primarily in the bad and alien quadrant of the graph.
The technician said, "I've never seen anything like this before. You don't like much of anything, Mr. South—not your name, not your self, not any UNE person or capability—any better than you like the Unity experiences you've had."
"Remember, I'm an outsider here," he told her gravely, tense when he realized how much the test had revealed. "I'm an alien to this culture, as well as to the Unity culture."
The only name or noun that was anywhere near the good side of the graph was STARBIRD. It wasn't news to him, but it sure stirred up the technician. She called a bunch of other technical types in to view the data.
Then the group conferred, and Dr. Smith came back to South, still sitting before the graphic display. "I'm sorry to do this, Commander South, but we're going to void these results. There's obviously something wrong with the psychomapping program."
"I haven't got time to do this again," he said warningly, getting up and backing away from her to prove his point.
"We understand that, sir. And we respect your situation. We'll void the data and proceed without this test. We can't redo it anyway: you're too aware now of the test's purpose."
"Then I'm free to go?"
"Of course. I believe someone's waiting to take you to your next appointment."
The woman was flustered, disturbed. Maybe he'd done more than go along with the test. Maybe he'd screwed it up without really trying, instinctively fudged the results.
"I don't need another nowtime appointment. I need to be left alone."
"Excuse me?" she said, and he realized she had no idea what he was talking about. So he let go, just a little, of his determination to focus temporally on the rate of reality in this spacetime.
Timeslip didn't have to be a problem, if you knew what you wanted. And he wanted to slide by the guy waiting to take him to yet another evaluation, past the security guards at the elevator, and down into the Blue Mid slipbay without being questioned, bothered, harassed, obstructed, or accompanied.
It was so easy, a kid could have done it. He focused on his desired location and let his body find the way.
Not even the slipbay guard station alarms tripped to him. He moderated the vertigo of moving through a spacetime at an accelerated rate by choosing interim goals at which he would stop, walk a few steps, and recalibrate his attention on the next leg of his journey.
When he slipped past the checkpoint and stopped himself, STARBIRD was only a few feet away. Riva Lowe was sitting on the apron leading to his ship—and then she wasn't.
He blinked his eyes and walked every step between him and the ship, carefully, concentrating fully. He'd been playing fast and loose with the rules here, bending the local physics through his altered brain, and it served him right if he encountered some time-displaced phenomenology as a result.
Riva was clearly in trouble when he'd seen her. Her head had been down and her legs curled close to her body, encircled by both her arms. But when had he seen her there? Not nowtime, whenever he'd arrived here. He had to find out how much time he'd slipped and see if she was all right. Maybe there was something he could do.
He'd had so much trouble dealing with the UNE's assault on his person, physical and psychic, he'd forgotten all about Riva. They'd probably been gentle with him, compared to the way they'd treat one of their own who was accountable, as ambassador from the UNE to the Unity, for all actions undertaken and results attained in Unity space.
If he'd seen her in the alltime, then she was badly in need of help. If he'd seen her in the nowtime, maybe there was nothing he could do. But if he'd seen her soontime, he might be able to stop the problem, whatever it was, before it occurred.
He moved determinedly up the apron, touched STARBIRD 's access plate with his palm, and climbed aboard.
As soon as Birdy heard his voice, she started fussing over him, trying to evaluate his physical and mental state and normalize it. He'd forgotten about that. "Don't normalize me, Birdy, okay? Just help me patch a line through to the Secretariat—high as we can reach. Remson's office. Or Mickey Croft's, if we've got the clout."
If Birdy got him on his bunk and started playing with his physiology via his bunkside pharmakit, he'd be high as a kite in notime, and less capable of doing what needed to be done for Riva.
Whatever the hell that turned out to be. All he wanted to do was fly this ship out of here, feel like he'd salvaged something. He'd never signed up to salvage the whole human race in the process. But Riva Lowe had. And he couldn't let her down. They were as close to two of a kind as people could get.
With Birdy clucking and fussing over him like a mother hen, he began working his way up the Secretariat chain of command toward Croft's office. He didn't know where else to look for her.
When he found her, he was going to do some damned thing about what he'd seen. Nowtime. After all, he was Commander South, expert on Unity space. They'd listen to him, whatever damnfool trajectory they were on that had upset Riva so.
They'd better listen. He had lots of options that the UNE couldn't counter, up to and including the ability to remove Ambassador Lowe from their custody, and their spacetime, by force.
CHAPTER 22
A New Way of Thinking
To Riva Lowe's senses, Mickey Croft's office in the Secretariat was a frontal assault. Beyond its sanctum's doors, harried staffers came and went, breathing streams of bile at one another, composing alphabet rubrics and incantations on electronic keypads that shouted lightspeed commands at full voice throughout the Stalk. Their scheming color-coded dreams of empires yet to be leaked in whispers through the walls of Croft's office to siphon all her energy and attention away.
The cacophony of the Stalk at work was nearly deafening, yet it had never bothered Lowe before. The soft blues and grays, creams and golds of Croft's office walls should have muted the sounds, blocked out the hubbub, baffled the hue and cry of government hounds on a dozen conflicting scents. Yet she was inundated.
No walls could keep so many intents at bay. No insulation could buffer her from all those minds set upon diverse duties, different goals, and multifarious ends. She might as well have been in a factory full of noise and steam, where some multicolored rug was being woven by a hundred hands, all tying knots and threading needles and loading spindles with colored threads that then fed into some huge machine that thumped and roared and whined and spun as it made myriad designs into one long, broad, field of view that as yet revealed no center and no theme.
She couldn't manage to sit
still, yet moving about Croft's office made everything ripple and sway about her. Across from the Secretary General's desk was a video depiction of the Grand Canyon on mother Earth, with birds wheeling lazily on updrafts in a warm blue sky fleeced with clouds. Every time she got near the picture, she found herself on the wing, peering with sharp hawk's eyes into the canyon's depths, hunting dinner, warm flesh, anticipating a rush of air and stone and exhilaration.
So she stayed away from the canyon on the wall and from the stars in the Secretary's skylight window. She tried to concentrate on what Croft was saying, but he was a death's head with a mouth that moved. The desktop on which he leaned his sharp and awkward elbows was alive in the alltime with ancestral fish that schooled and darted in the pasttime through a sea that became stone and made them fossils in the nowtime.
How could Croft work in here? How could anybody think in here? Sort priorities in the dark? Make decisions blindfolded? Listen to reason with deaf ears? She was baffled, buffeted, bludgeoned with the uncontrolled force of randomicity hard at work.
And Croft wanted answers. He wanted answers to questions framed in ignorance, articulated with suspicion, couched in paranoia. He wanted her to remember everything that had happened to her since she left the UNE in terms of past, present, and future benefit or threat to humanity, and to evaluate her experiences in a context of opportunity or crisis.
Mickey said, "Are we correct in assuming that the Unity Embassy is actually and physically, not figuratively, Unity territory?" Under his elbows, ancient fishes swam in circles.
Riva Lowe replied, "Yes, certainly. When you and Remson were in the embassy meeting with us, you were existing in the heart of the Unity." Meeting the Secretary General there had been easier for Riva, freed from the din of so many spacetimers moving from their past to their future in lockstep, one heartbeat at a time. She took a seat in the chair before his desk, careful to cover all the intermittent distance, one step at a time.
The SecGen frowned and said, "You're confirming that the bulkheads or walls of the Unity Embassy contain a physically different spacetime from ours, in which natural laws obey a different set of rules—their rules? Unity rules?"
She shrugged, and the nowtime gesture rippled from her body through the air to his. the waves of its energy breaking against his frame, his face, and moving on. "The Unity Embassy is a physical construct with special boundary conditions, allowing passage across discontinuities from one spacetime to another, yes. But local universe rules can't be changed for ... all time. They can be bent, but not broken." What was he worried about? She didn't understand the point of these questions. The right answers were all around him in his own experiential reality.
Mickey continued implacably. "So when we enter there, into the Unity Embassy, we are actually in Unity space, with all its special properties and multidimensional characteristics?"
She said, *T don't understand what you're getting at. Mr. Secretary."
He said, "Don't you? Has the Unity created a permanent presence here, or not?**
"Permanent? Here? Nothing is permanent here."
"Something is sticking its multidimensional head into UNE space out there near the Ball site, and that's for sure."
"You gave permission for the Unity to build an embassy at those coordinates."
"Build, as in create a finite structure. Not a one-way door from their universe to ours."
"Oh." she said. "I see your problem." Croft was frightened, then—or at least overwhelmed. She hadn't just imagined it, or attributed her own distress to him.
"My problem? My dear Madam Ambassador, this is our problem. The UNE can't tolerate an invasion of its sovereign territory, even a seemingly passive one."
"You sent me out to Unity space as your representative. I didn't think you wanted me to spy on them. I thought we wanted to establish relations."
"I'm not asking you to spy. I'm asking you what you think their motives are, for taking such liberties with their embassy."
"I'm glad we have that point clear. As for what I think their motives are, they are simply proceeding to establish the physical base for diplomatic relations on a continuing basis. How else could they have interpreted your offer to build an embassy at the Ball site but to build one?"
"You're being purposely obtuse."
"I don't think so, Mr. Secretary." Riva Lowe's nails were digging into the palms of her hands. She spread her fingers and looked at them. Then she looked up at Croft and saw too many Crofts trying to fit into the same nowtime moment: a brave one, a tired one, a sad one, a frightened one, an old one, a wise one, and a foolish one who was afraid that he had opened a door he could not close, through which would come unknowable peril. "I'm only trying to answer your nowtime questions, which aren't wholly representative of your concerns." She nearly slipped and talked to his qualms directly, without a spoken predicate from him. She mustn't do that. He was already too close to rejecting everything she was saying, out of hand.
He said, "I'm concerned, yes. I'm concerned about contamination—yours, mine, even Mr. Remson's. Something happens to human beings when they're exposed to Unity aliens, even for a short time. You must have noticed certain, ah, changes in your perceptual and perhaps physical reality, Madam Ambassador. And in your mission staff. We're having a workup done of Commander South's psychometrics, as well as his physio stats. Since we have recent data on South from which to draw a comparison, perhaps analysis of that data will support my concerns, perhaps not" Croft paused and stood up. It seemed to her that his body was spewing emotional energy that was visible in the visual spectrum as harsh colored waves that bounced off the ceiling, the walls, her chest.
Was he dismissing her on that note? Did everything hang on Joe South's ability to be pronounced fit for duty? What if he was not capable of passing the Secretariat's tests? She wanted to curl up into a ball, close her eyes, and huddle there until the storm of Croft's emotional distress was past. She mustn't.
The Secretary General of the UNE walked over to his window on the stars, leaving a trail of Crofts behind him that stretched all the way back to his desk. She stood up, too, determined to join him, to explain to him, to convince him that his fears were unfounded.
Where was the man she'd known, the consummate bureaucrat she'd trusted, who'd sent her on this mission with such high hopes? Where was the diplomat par excellence, who'd inspired not only her but so many others to give more than they thought they had to give?
Riva Lowe took one uncertain step toward Croft, and then time slipped her grasp. Her body slid in one distended instant all the way to the Secretary General's side. Ignore the timeslip. Croft was having the same sorts of troubles, that much was obvious.
She said, "Don't base a decision this important on one man's physical state. Or yours. Or mine. We're reacting the way we must to survive—"
"That's what I'm afraid of." Staring out at the starscape that only the privileged of Threshold ever saw, Croft said, "I can't let contact with the Unity continue on an uncontrolled basis. We don't know what their intentions are. We can't evaluate the risks. We've got to slow down. We're going too fast."
"Human beings have been preparing for this moment for tens of thousands of years," she said numbly. "Please, don't do this, Mickey. We've been living the same way, thinking the same way, reaching for something more, but always trapped in a universe of confinement, for so long, we've stopped trying to free ourselves. We've forgotten how to grow. We want everything to be predictable and controllable. We're such good prisoners that we don't even remember that we once had an intuitive understanding that there was more to life than reproduction and death. And now, when the door of our prison is opening before us, and the key is in your hand, you want to turn back? Slow down? Board up the door again, maybe forever? We've got to learn to think a different way, that's all. Change isn't bad. Evolution isn't a threat. You can't institutionalize stasis."
"You're out of your mind if you think I can't, and won't, insist on caution, evaluate the pote
ntial risks and the opportunities, and make a reasoned decision only when I am ready. Time doesn't seem to mean one whole hell of a lot to the Unity, so what's the hurry?"
Croft turned to her then, and she was nearly staggered by the sudden hostility coming out of him.
She said, "The hurry is for us, not for them. They've gone to tremendous effort to offer us this chance. Rebuff them, and we may not have another. We don't have the science to reinstate contact if they break it off—"
"I'm willing to take that risk. I'm not willing to take the risk of moving Threshold out beyond Pluto's orbit until I see a reason to do so that outweighs the risk of two hundred and fifty thousand people who depend on Threshold life support. You've been out there in Unity space too long, Madam Ambassador. You've 'gone native.' Nothing you've said to me gives me a single overriding reason to take such a risk. What's out there in the Unity domain for the United Nations of Earth?"
"Everything you ever dreamed possible," she breathed, catching his eyes in hers and holding on for dear life in the maelstrom of conflict between them. "The Unity is made up of more than six hundred intelligent species, every one of them possessed of more sophisticated science and technology than our own. They have the keys to the kingdom, Mr. Secretary, and they're offering to let the human race in the door. Don't say no, I beg you."
"I can't base a recommendation on your subjective analysis, Riva. You should know that. What concerns me most is the way I've let myself be led into this. It should concern you, too. Now if you want to input my decision, then put together a reasoned assessment of the benefits available to the UNE from interaction with the Unity. And convince me, somehow, that the physical side effects both of us have experienced—are experiencing—aren't hazardous to humanity's collective health. Until then, nobody's moving anything out of orbit around here—unless it's the Unity Embassy and that damned Ball."
There was no use in arguing the matter further. If she told Croft what he wanted to know, nowtime, he would never permit Threshold to be moved. He was simply too hostile and frightened to be reasoned with. Riva herself was mentally exhausted and physically queasy from the strain of keeping this interview on a strictly four-dimensional level. "Yes, sir. I'll do that, sir," she said primly. "And thank you for the opportunity to submit an official opinion."